What Does an SEO Agency Do Each Month? A Checkable List
What an SEO agency should do each month: fixes, content, plans and a report, where to check each one yourself, and a real month from a site we run.
By Tyler Phan4 min readLast reviewed
On this page
In April someone posted on r/SEO that their new agency hadn't impressed them: "Not delivering on what they said, lots of errors, just passive, lackluster interactions as well." The thread drew 118 comments. One of the most upvoted asked the question that matters: "What are the monthly goals or tasked they delivered that you find it Meh?" It's hard to judge an agency if you don't know what a month of its work should contain.
The work, and where to check it
| Work | What it looks like | Where you check it |
|---|---|---|
| Technical fixes | Speed, indexing, redirects, schema, broken pages | A change list with URLs; Search Console's page indexing report |
| Content | New pages, rewritten pages, merged pages | The pages themselves, the sitemap, publish dates |
| Planning | Topics and target searches for next month | A written plan you can read before the month starts |
| Links (if sold) | Links from other sites, outreach, mentions | A list of the linking URLs you can open |
| Reporting | Clicks, impressions, and what was done | Your own Search Console, for the same dates |
Google's page on hiring an SEO lists what "many SEOs and other agencies and consultants" provide. The list includes "Review of your site content or structure", "Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript", "Content development", "Keyword research" and "Optimizing for generative AI". It also suggests asking: "Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?"
Ask that question before you sign, and again each month. Work on a website leaves traces. A rewritten title shows in the page source, a new article has a URL and a date, a fixed redirect answers differently when you open the old address. An agency that did the work can list it.
Not every month looks the same
Some of this work is done once. A month spent on titles, meta tags and site structure shouldn't repeat every month. One agency SEO in a r/SEO thread on agency workloads said: "You shouldnt be updating titles, and header tags every month anyways. We update them very rarely." A commenter in the same thread put it the same way: "Things like meta tags, technical fixes, etc. shouldn't be done (or don't have to be done) every month."
The same thread shows how little time can sit behind a retainer. The person who started it works at an agency with 5 to 6 clients and wrote: "Only 2 hrs a week for a client and expect to get results in growth = insanity." A reply from another agency: "We only allocate 2-3 hours per month per client at our agency." That agency works in home services, where its sites "aren't usually bigger than 20 pages". These are two people, not a survey. They're still a useful reminder to ask for the hours or the deliverables in numbers.
A real month from a site we run
Here is one month of work on a card game site we own and run, from our sample report. In September 2026 the site published 78 articles, and 29 more were written in September for October. Its Google clicks fell from 10,938 in August to 5,577 in September, down 49%.
Most of the drop came from one group of pages. A new card set came out at the end of August. Articles written before it came out (previews, spoilers, pre-orders, release dates) had 4,331 clicks in August and 195 in September. Fewer people search for a release date once the release is out. Deck guides, tier lists and card lists for the new set went from 33 clicks to 1,361 in the same months.
So a month can be full of work and still go down. The report has to show both: what was done, and what happened to the numbers, with a reason. This site publishes more articles than our plan includes (up to 30 a month), and it isn't on the plan. We use it because it's real data we can show.
The r/smallbusiness post from an owner who quit an agency describes the opposite case: "got monthly reports with lots of graphs. rankings didn't really move for any of the things that matter for my business." Graphs aren't a list of work, and they don't explain a result.
Check your agency in 15 minutes
- Ask for last month's list of changes, with the URL of each page
- Open three pages from the list and check that the change is there
- Inspect two new URLs in Search Console: are they indexed?
- In the page indexing report, look for a rise in noindex or Not found pages
- In the Performance report, compare clicks with the number in their report, same dates
- In Settings, check who owns the property and who has access
If the list and the pages match, the agency is doing what it says, whatever the month's numbers did. If there's no list, or the pages don't match it, that's worth a direct question before the next invoice. Our post on what a monthly SEO report should include covers the report itself.
What our month includes
Our plan is $500 for the first month, which covers an SEO and GEO audit, the technical fixes, site design and a content plan. After that it's $300 a month for up to 30 articles, ongoing technical fixes, hosting, the domain and maintenance. A person approves every article before it's published. There's no link building.
The monthly report lists what we published, what we fixed, and your Search Console clicks and impressions. You can cancel any time, and we reply to email within 12 hours. The SEO content service page has the details.
Questions
How many hours does an SEO agency spend on one client?
We haven't found a published figure. Two people who work at agencies said on r/SEO in October 2026 that they get about 2 hours a week per client, and 2 to 3 hours a month per client for small home-services sites. Ask your agency for the hours or the deliverables in numbers.
Should an SEO agency do the same tasks every month?
No. Titles, meta tags and the site's structure are mostly set once and checked now and then. The monthly part is usually new content, fixes for whatever new pages and updates break, and the report. A good agency tells you which kind of month you're in.
How we know this
Written by Tyler Phan. Every source below was read on the date shown; the page was last reviewed on Oct 16, 2026.
- Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?, accessed Oct 16, 2026
- r/SEO, Disappointed in new SEO agency, should I fire them? (comment by u/chaw1431), accessed Oct 16, 2026
- r/SEO, 2hrs each week to 6-10hrs monthly depending on client to make SEO work (post by u/greencard3, comments by u/JakeHundley, u/Solopreneurwrites), accessed Oct 16, 2026
- r/smallbusiness, i spent 6 months paying an agency for SEO and nothing moved, accessed Oct 16, 2026
- Elmrank, Sample monthly report (card game site, September 2026), accessed Oct 16, 2026
- Elmrank, Terms of Service (service, monthly report), accessed Oct 16, 2026
Send us your site.
We reply within 12 hours with what we'd fix first. Then we run it for you, technical SEO and content: $500 for the first month, then $300 a month for up to 30 articles. You don't need any technical knowledge, and you can cancel any time.
